him jerking with surprise and then he was laughing at her. `The awful things you manageto come up with! All of twenty-seven, aren't you?'She sipped tea, eyes down. `Twenty-eight, but don't start counting, will you? So hateful to bereminded. ...' Twenty-eight. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she had seven years left of her present career.Then the lines, those inevitable signs of ageing, would come. Oh, she had money enough, but theboredom! And, she admitted